I Know What You're Thinking
"Ha! This is Conrad trying to all poetical with deliberately missing out letters and substituting an apostrophe"
Except No.
What you see here is but an anagram, which, if I can plug it into the AI Art Generator -
You see, we are back at the next portion of that '68 Mind-Mashing Mish-Up Manuscripts' from the channel 'Sci-Fi Odyssey' and you'll see the hilarious derivation of today's title. I have to confess this Intro serial has gone on for longer than I imagined it would, as Your Humble Scribe has plenty to say on this list.
No. 42: The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov (1954). The 'Slaves O' Effect' anagram revealed. I remember this novel as it was always, always, always, promoted in the blurb section at the back of every Panther paperback from 1970 onwards. Art!
This is a combination of dysopian future crossed with a policier, where a human detective must co-operate with a robot detective to solve a murder. No, I have not read it but may get around to it in the future, which is probably a motif Ol' Isaac lived by. The Earth of this fiction has a population of over 8 billion, mostly living underground in order to cope with their hideous dystopian future, except here we are living in 2026 with - 8 billion persons. Go figure.
41: This Island Earth by Raymond Jones (1952): A turn up for the books, Conrad did not realise that there was a novel that preceded the film, as I have not read it. Art!
In case you have been living alongside Luther Largreeves on the Moon, TIE deals with sinister inscrutable aliens from Metaluna whom recruit Hom. Sap. unknowingly into their interplanetary war versus Zagon. Unlike contemporary fiction, in TIE the Metalunans are repellent authoritarian dictators whom are in the last stages of losing a war against their Zagonian enemy, and are not missed when they get SPOILERED. Exeter, whom proves to be the principled moral exception, is SPOILERED. We have put up illos of TOI as examples of matte work in film, which you ought to pay attention to. We have to also pay tribute to the Metalutant mutant that suffers a fatal interplanetary hangover. Art!
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| YOU NEED A HELMET MATE |
40: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005). Reading the plot seems to inform of slaves of defect. I haven't read it myself. It tells of unaware clones raised to be organ-banks for recipients, who only gradually discover their reason for being. A laugh-fest it does not resemble. In fact, having read the precis there doesn't seem to be any good reason to read the rest of the thing. Worthy But Dull.
39: Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2015). Never heard of it. Time travel fiction? Allow me to peruse teh Interwebz. Nope. It also involves lots of spiders, so no thank you and let's move on. Art!
38: Hyperion by Dan Simmons (1989). Ha! I read a paperback of this only a couple of years ago and remember exactly what it's about. Mostly exactly. Part exactly. Okay, okay, there was a crewless ship and a monster and 'dissection tables' and people off on an odyssey. Art!
No. 37: The Metamorphosis Of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams (2002). Not only have I not heard of it, Conrad does not want to have anything to do with it. This sounds like the kind of pseudo nonsense that makes people point and laugh, alongside the worries of what 'Secondary Intellect' might be. Art!
aApparently about an AI that delivers superabundance, wish-fulfilment and the cure for male-pattern baldness, this one asks questions about what else Hom. Sap. would need to feel content. 'A pint and another woman' as I remember one of my compatriots on the catering crew in Stepping Hill. Yes he was male and single as you speculate.
I note that this is the inverse of 'Roko's Basilisk', which is a frankly judgemental and punitive AI intent on delivering Old Testament punishment on Hom. Sap. for being Hom. Sap. Let us all root for Prime! Art?
Nuclear Spinach Pig Force Attacks the Moon. Or something.
Time to move onto more serious matters*. Well, more serious matters in retrospec. I have a feeling 'Nuclear Spinach Pig Attack Force' is going to be seen in the future. As in "Only NUCLEAR SPINACH PIG FORCE ATTACK can save us now", Harry Harrison where are you when we need you!
More Misery For Mordorvia!
A bad day for Ruffia is generally a good day for the rest of the world. This time it's not military incompetence, economic woe or political nonsense, more geopolitical in nature. Art!
This is the Qumishi airbase in Syria. You ought to recall that the barbarous Assad regime there went toes-up at the end of 2024, meaning Ruffia lost one of it's allies in the Middle East. They lost the port of Tartarus, their only warm water port. Now the Syrian government seems to have laid down strict edicts about the orc's presence in Syria, because the entire airbase is being evacuated. Not only have they lost a political ally, now their presence on the ground is gone. This will be glum news for the orcs who were based there, as they can now be sent as sunflower-fodder to Ukraine. Ruffia: transitioning from a global power to a local one <points and laughs>.
Once Again, Fire That Sub-Editor
Conrad is impressed with how nonchalant various media employees are, thinking that arcane jargon will be understood immediately by all.
Not so! Art?
'Steam dev Valve' makes absolutely no sense to a casual reader. Is that a typo for 'Stream'? Who or what is 'dev'? Let me show you a valve - Art!
No, I am not going to click on the link. I shall merely sit and fume silently.
Conrad Is ANGRY! (Yes Again)
It might be time to pause the merciful use of the Remote Nuclear Tormentor and revert to the Remote Nuclear Detonator. Art!!
A thing of beauty, isn't it?
ANYWAY AGAIN let me list the monstrosities that the Codeword compilers have dared to us.
EXIGIBLE: I mean, what? Conrad is widely read yet has never come across this word before, making it hard to solve. It's not even in my Collins Concise, for heavens sake! Must I resort to teh Interwebz? Well, if I must - "Able to be charged or levied" when applied to taxes. Ah! Like tariffs. Art!
Tony The Tariff Toad
OHMS: No! Nothing to do with 'On His Majesty's Secret -'. It a unit of electrical resistance, named after the Teuton physicist Georg Simon Ohm. Talk about obscure. Conrad has studied physics and electronics which I why I got it immediately, but I am concerned about the rest of you intellectual lubbers. Art!
An Ohmmeter
KIBBUTZ: Referring to my CCED, "A collective agricultural settlement in modern Israel, owned and administered communally by it's members which I am well aware of, given that some of my compatriots at work have been to work on one. HOWEVER! in glowing neon letters ten feet tall, how unfair is it to hurl Hebrew at a Codeword solver? I feel a letter to the ICC coming on. Art!
A kibbutz
Finally -
Let's go out with another Biercism.
"Saw, n: a trite popular saying or proverb. So called because it makes it's way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws with new teeth.
Where there's a will there's a won't
Strike while your employer has a big contract
Least said is soonest disavowed
Example is better than following it."
*HAH!
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